Visualizing Goals

Visualization is a very big part of who I am. In my early twenties I had a guy friend who turned me on to the idea. Because of him, I started making lists, and imagining myself in a future I thought I wanted. And, an amazing thing happened.  Almost invariably, what I imagined came to be. I wanted to live in Europe, that happened. I wanted to be educated, that happened. I wanted to have a great relationship with my kids, that happened. I became a writer, a manager, a director. Almost everything I visualized in my twenties and thirties happened in one incarnation or another. Maybe I was lucky, who knows.

I've had pitfalls along the way too.  There were many things that didn't quite work out the way I hoped they would. As it turns out, for some of those things, I didn't really have a clear picture of how they would work. Maybe that's what went wrong. Some of them just wouldn't work, and understanding that took some time.

Have I learned from those experiences? Maybe. It's hard to say. A year or so ago, I realized that I'd achieved a lot of what I set out to do, but still wasn't happy. I was happy to have achieved those feats, but without new feats I found I was flailing again.

Without a general direction to go, I just didn't know what to do with myself. I need goals, but what I know now is that goals don't necessarily have to be oriented to career, money, property or status. My new goal is to just live a lovely life, and figuring out what I need to do to stay on that path is my current endeavor. I really hope it happens.